


You Are The Word I'm Looking For

by thesewordselope (jadebloods)



Category: Bandom, Fall Out Boy
Genre: Awkward Sexual Situations, Embarrassment, M/M, Masturbation, Masturbation in Shower, Mutual Masturbation, Shower Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-01
Updated: 2012-01-01
Packaged: 2017-11-03 01:52:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,447
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/375779
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jadebloods/pseuds/thesewordselope
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's like waking up with a word on your tongue, and while you remember what the word means, you don't remember exactly what word it is.</p>
            </blockquote>





	You Are The Word I'm Looking For

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted to the damnyouwentz LJ community on July 7, 2006. For my friend Beckah.

"You are the word I'm looking for when I'm trying to describe how I feel inside, and the right one just won't come to my mind." - Eminem, Crazy In Love

  

It's like waking up with a word on your tongue, and while you remember what the word _means_ , you don't remember exactly what word it is. 

He hated the feeling of waking up and not immediately knowing where he was. It's like how some physicists said that an object existed in every possible state of being until it was observed, only in this case he could have been anywhere-- _anywhere_ \-- until he actually recognized something. A chair in the corner, or maybe the lamp next to the bed. Maybe the smell of the sheets or the way the slight slanted through the windows. Sensory clues to where he might be in space and time eventually lock him into a location. But that took time, and while he was generally a patient guy, he was also a nervous guy. 

His sheets were already hot from the afternoon sun, and he watched as a beetle crawled up the outside of his window, grasping for the dissipating details of a dream. Something about a monkey-- no, a puppy. And shoulders, and a streetlight in the middle of the night. Someone was walking a dog. It was him. He had been walking Hemingway. And there were hips. He'd seen something through the window of the house. Something else, too. There was-- there had been-- 

He rolled over on his back and realized he was tenting the sheets. Oh. There had definitely been something else. He put one arm behind his head and closed his eyes. Hips. That's a good place to start. Someone's hands running along the waist of someone else's jeans. Had he seen that through the window in his dream? He thought so. He hooked his thumb under the elastic of his boxers, pulling it down just enough to feel the warm brush of the sheets. There had been stubble, and polished fingernails. Pubic bones. Pubic hairs poking out of the aforementioned jeans. He might have been making it up at this point, the way one fills in the missing details of dreams that are only half-remembered anyway. Artistic license, right? Pubic hairs felt necessary. He had a general feeling of _necessary_ things right now. Inhale (up), exhale (down). Again. Again. 

And again. 

He was still lying directly in the summer sunlight from his window, the surface temperature rising, and sweat broke out in a light sheen on the back of his neck and behind his knees. Respiration, another necessary thing, became shallow and deliberate. Noise, on the other hand, was not necessary. Frowned upon, even, because he never knew who was going to be in this house, or when. He moved the arm that was under his head and braced it against the headboard of the bed, pushing just enough to tense the muscles in his arm, to steady himself even though he wasn't really in danger of falling anywhere. He had to fight to keep from clenching his stomach as his brows knit together and his muscles felt like molten lead. His skin had that too tight feeling, and he realized that he could now hear himself but he was too _close_ to care and-- 

And the door opened with a bang as it hit the stop. It was Pete. "Hey sexypants, lunch is--" 

Patrick's eyes flew open as the rest of his body froze. His hand was still on his dick, though thankfully that was covered by the sheet. As if Pete couldn't tell anyway. 

"--oh. Um." Pete had on a very ugly purple bathrobe. And stubble. He hadn't shaved yet this morning. He shifted his weight from one foot to the other. "Sorry. I just wanted to tell you that lunch is on. Whenever you're ready." Patrick just stared at him like a deer caught in headlights. He couldn't have opened his mouth if he'd wanted to. "Right," Pete turned abruptly and shut the door. 

Patrick listened to the footsteps receding down the hall. He couldn't bring himself to move until the sound disappeared into the depths of the house. First he let go of the headboard, then he let go of his dick. It was still hard, but he knew there was no way he could do anything about that now. His sense of embarrassment would overpower his libido any moment now. It was almost like clockwork. Count to ten and then-- yep, soft. 

Well, that was that, then. 

_What does one wear downstairs to lunch when one was just caught masturbating by one's best friend and roommate?_ he thought to himself. Jeans, of course, to hide any last vestiges of erection, and a very big shirt. Something to hide in, if necessary. If it hadn't been summer in California, he probably would have worn a parka with the hood up to hide his face. 

  

The house was obviously conspiring against him. Every floorboard creaked, announcing his approach as he walked downstairs to the kitchen. "Here comes the masturbator!" they were saying. Patrick wondered if Pete would pretend it didn't happen, or if he'd try to turn it into some kind of joke. Knowing Pete, it would probably be the latter, because somewhere in Pete's mind was the logic that making a joke out of something automatically stopped it from being awkward. This was not earth logic to Patrick, but there was no stopping it. 

He wanted to have something witty to say when Pete inevitably brought it up, but the words caught in his throat like jacks in a soda bottle. The first few came out fine, but then they began to get in the way and block each other in the rush to get out. Whenever that happened he'd always trip over himself, or two words would try to come out at the same time and the end result would be some not-a-word that began as one and ended as another. Wonderulous. Amawesome. Grood. 

He sometimes wished he could express himself with music at all times. Words were so unnecessary when you could rebuke someone with the blast of a trumpet. A rainy-day feeling could be found in the strings of a violin. Love was a harpsichord solo. Anger on a bass guitar. Sex by saxophone. 

Embarrassment was a few very wrong notes on a piano. Like when Pete tried to play one of the songs he learned as a kid. It would be coming along fine when all of a sudden his finger would hit a key and it would be all _wrong_. 

Just off center. 

It always came back to that. 

He made it to the kitchen, thankful for the linoleum that wouldn't betray him with every step. Not that it mattered, because Pete was right there, sitting at the table. He still had on that damn ugly bathrobe. Not quite ready to make eye contact, Patrick looked around the room. There was spaghetti sauce on pretty much every available surface. 

He needed to say something. Words, always with the words. "You cooked," he said after a few seconds. It wasn't quite a question, but not really a statement, either. 

"Yep," Pete said, gesturing towards a pot on the stove that Patrick assumed was full of spaghetti noodles. "I figured, you know, what with my newfound independence and all, I should learn to cook for myself." He twirled angel-hair pasta on his fork and stuffed his face while Patrick stood in the doorway. "What? I promise there aren't any monkey brains in it." 

Patrick walked over to the stove and looked into the pot. It looked pretty good, actually. He looked around for an empty Ragu bottle or some equivalent thing, but there was none to be found. "There's no meat in the sauce? Monkey brains or no?" he asked without turning around to look at Pete. 

"Would I do that to you? Or myself, for that matter?" 

He raised an eyebrow but otherwise didn't answer. He fixed a plate for himself and sat down as far from Pete as possible. They ate in silence for a while, Pete bouncing his leg contentedly under the table. Patrick always thought he looked like a puppy jerking its leg from a really good belly rub when he did that. He had almost-- almost-- forgotten about the bedroom incident. But no, he wasn't going to get off that easily (pun not intended). 

"So," Pete began. "Have fun?" 

Patrick's fork stopped in mid-twirl. "Not really, no." 

"Well, didn't you--" 

"No," Patrick said forcefully, in what he thought was an I-don't-want-to-talk-about-it voice. 

"Why not?" Pete looked genuinely confused. 

Patrick dropped his fork all together. "I think I'm going to go for a walk." He stood up, his chair screeching against the linoleum as the backs of his knees pushed it away from the table. 

"It isn't a big deal, you know. I mean, it is a little weird for any parent to realize their baby is growing up, but I'm sure I'll get over it. It's a natural rite of passage and all of that." 

_If it really wasn't a big deal, you wouldn't be trying to reassure me that it isn't,_ he thought to himself. "Yeah, you're right." He dropped his plate in the sink with the small crashing sound of stoneware against Formica. 

"Hey," Pete said as Patrick made for the door. "I'm probably going to go out in a little while, so make sure you take a key just in case." 

"Right," he said, his back to Pete as he left the kitchen. Wonderful. 

  

Pete always made him feel like he was groping for words he couldn't quite remember. Possibly because Pete _was_ words. Pete's job was to come up with the words, and Patrick's job was to put them to music, and to sing them on occasion. He was perfectly fine with letting Pete put the words in his mouth. That's just how it went. 

He'd never seen Pete at a loss for words before. Never seen him trip or stumble over something trying to get out. He'd seen Pete stick his foot in his mouth on many occasions, but that wasn't the same thing. The right words came to Pete, even if they weren't the most appropriate words. He still always knew what he wanted to say. There was no feeling he couldn't express. 

Patrick shuffled his feet through the dry grass, kicking up dirt and dust as he went. He didn't walk on the sidewalk because he liked the feel of dirt under his shoes. The dry heat here was so much different than the always wet Midwest. He missed the way the weather changed at a moment's notice, sunny days turning into thunderstorms in a matter of hours. When he was a kid, his mom had liked to say that if he didn't like the weather, all he had to do was wait fifteen minutes. That was an exaggeration, but still. The constant sun got a little boring after a while. Maybe he was just homesick. 

He was more than a little disconcerted about the way Pete had reacted earlier. He hadn't ignored what had happened, but he didn't exactly make a big joke out of it either. Patrick knew for sure that if Pete had walked in on Joe beating off, there would have been a very loud scene about it at the table. Possibly involving props and funny voices. But Pete hadn't walked in on Joe, he'd walked in on _Patrick_ , and instead of joking about it he'd seemed, well-- 

Interested. 

Patrick didn't want to think about what that meant. Did Pete not think Patrick could handle the jokes? Well, that was probably pretty true, but he didn't want the other guys thinking he was some kind of pussy who couldn't deal with being made fun of, either. And he was being silly; he knew they other guys didn't think that. But the fact remained that Pete hadn't acted the way he normally would have. The fact was, he _could_ take a joke. At least, he usually could. It hadn't been the fact that Pete walked in on him masturbating that had him all weirded out right now. It was the fact that he had been masturbating to a dream he'd had about Pete. Yeah. That was it. 

Of course, Pete had no way of knowing that. 

But if Pete didn't know that, why hadn't there been a big smarmy joke? 

And what was he supposed to say about it? "Sorry I'm being so weird about this, Pete, it's just that I was jerking off to a dream I'd just had where I was taking Hemingway for a walk and wound up watching through a window as you fucked Jeanae. So I'm sure you can see why I don't want to talk about this anymore. Oh, and hey, please don't mention this to anyone else. And why are you so interested, anyway?" Right. Sure. Absolutely! 

Probably most disturbing of all was the fact that merely thinking about the dream just now had been enough to turn him on a little bit. Okay, more than a little bit. He jammed his fists into his pockets to hide the bulge and picked up speed. He was only a few blocks away from home. 

  

The front door was locked when Patrick got back to the house. _Good, maybe I'll finally be able to get off in peace,_ he thought. He kicked his shoes off on the porch and fished the key out of pocket. The house was very quiet, the only sound being the whisper of Patrick's socks against the hardwood floor. 

He went into the kitchen first and peeked into the fridge for a cold beverage of some sort, needing to rehydrate after that long walk in the sun. He settled on a can of lemonade and popped the tab, drinking it in long gulps even though the citric acid burned the tip of his tongue and the edges of his mouth. He rubbed the crotch of his jeans absently, repositioning himself. Not only was he hard, but he was sweaty, and it was rather gross. He put down the empty can and decided to do it in the shower. All the better, because it made it that less likely for him to be walked in on by the Pete Wentzes of the world. 

He took off his hat and tossed it on the kitchen table as he left in the direction of the staircase. A cool shower would feel very good right now, indeed. He rubbed his hand over his neck, ruffling the hair that had been flattened there by the sweat under his hat. He entered the living room and had one foot on the stairs when he realized he heard someone breathing. 

He paused and looked around the room. There wasn't anyone to be seen, and he was just about to dismiss it as a trick of the breeze along the eaves when he heard it again. The couch was turned away from him, towards the LCD television on the far wall. Pete had probably forgotten whatever it was he had to do this afternoon and had fallen asleep on the couch. Patrick struggled with this for a moment. If Pete was asleep, it would be in his best interests to let him keep sleeping, go upstairs, and take a shower. If it was a guest, however, Patrick might be expected to play host until Pete returned. He shifted his weight from one foot to another and finally decided to walk over and investigate. 

It-- well, it was Pete, alright. Pete had changed out of the bathrobe into a band t-shirt and gym shorts. His eyes were closed, and he might have been asleep if not for the fact that his hand was down his shorts. 

Patrick didn't know how to proceed. He felt like he should either say something or walk away, but he could do neither. He just stared as Pete stroked himself slowly, chewing on his lower lip. If he didn't do _something_ soon, Pete was bound to open his eyes and notice he was standing there. But. He was glued to the spot, mesmerized by what he was seeing. Pete's breathing was slow and steady, not at all shallow or hitching, which meant he had either just started or had been going at the same pace for a very long time. Patrick inhaled and prepared to say something, but the hand in his pocket brushed against his dick and it was almost too much to bear. 

Pete opened his eyes. Smiled. Leave it to Pete to smile charmingly at someone watching him jerk off. "Hey." 

Patrick felt a line of fire run up his spine as adrenaline pumped into his system and he felt anger welling up somewhere in his chest. "What the _fuck_ are you doing?" 

"What, you can't tell?" Pete looked down at his crotch. "I guess I didn't expect you back so soon." 

Patrick looked at him incredulously, his heart pounding in his ears. At this point he didn't know if he was horny or angry or both. 

"Okay, look," Pete said, finally taking his hand out of his shorts and sitting up, "I thought that if-- you know-- if you walked in on me then you wouldn't be so weird about me walking in on you. It's like we're Even Stephen now." 

Patrick barked out an angry laugh. "This doesn't--" He threw his hands in the air. "You don't make sense. I'm going to take a shower." 

Pete waited until Patrick was halfway up the stairs before calling out, "Is that your way of saying we're not even, then?" 

  

Did he really think-- honestly, did he think that this was the best way to go about addressing the situation? Who in their right mind would purposefully set a trap so that their best friend would see them jerking off? Who could possibly be so far removed from reality as to find that a good idea? 

Well, the answer was apparently Pete. 

Patrick waited until there was a door between him and the rest of the house to begin taking his clothes off. He pulled his shirt over his head and threw it at the hamper in the corner of the bathroom. He slid back the glass door and turned on the shower, feeling the water for temperature. Fuck the cool shower, he wanted a cold shower. He didn't want to take any chances. He would just have to never masturbate again, and that would be the end of it. How hard could it be, really? 

Actually, it could be pretty damn hard. 

Actually, _he_ was pretty damn hard. 

He took off his jeans and boxers and threw them at the hamper as well. He stood there for a moment, avoiding looking in the mirror at his dick, which had to be sticking straight out in front of him. Like a divining rod, har, har. Point the way, old buddy. I follow my dick everywhere I go. 

He stepped into the shower and braced himself against the cold water. The cold hit him straight in the lungs when he put his face under the stream, but he had to tough it out. He tried to think of unsexy things, like his parents boning, but it pretty much just kept coming back to Pete. He finally gave up. Turning the hot water up, he let it roll down his back. 

Fact was, seeing Pete touch himself for however many fifteen or so seconds had been one of the hottest things Patrick had ever seen in his life. Maybe, he admitted, the hottest thing ever. The minds of teenage boys can come up with some pretty sexy scenarios, but he didn't remember any of his fantasies coming close to this. Maybe it was the immediateness of it, or the intensity behind it, but he couldn't stop himself. 

He braced himself against the wall of the shower with one arm and leaned into it, grabbing himself with the other hand. He stroked in tandem with the image of Pete in his head. He saw Pete's teeth chewing on the corner of his mouth, his chest rising and falling with steady breaths. He watched as the Pete in his mind took his dick out of his shorts and ran his hand up and down-- and at the same time, he _was_ Pete. He was touching Pete by touching himself and his mental Pete felt what he felt. He leaned forward and bit his forearm as his breath began to hitch and-- 

And the door opened with a bang as it hit the stop. It was Pete. 

"You've got to be kidding me," Patrick exhaled in a whisper, burying his eyes in his forearm. His hand was, of course, still on his dick, though this time it was in plain sight through the glass door of the shower. "Is this really necessary? Don't you think you've embarrassed me enough for one day?" 

When Pete didn't say anything right away, Patrick looked up. Pete was standing in the doorway, wearing the same outfit as before, except now he was sporting a pronounced tent in his gym shorts. He watched, helpless, as Pete walked towards him, opened the shower door, and stepped in-- clothes and all. "I meant for you to watch me do this," he said, leaning in close to Patrick. The stream of water from the shower head made his clothes cling to his body. "But you walked away." 

"Maybe I didn't want to see it?" A pretty ridiculous thing for a guy still holding his dick to say, but it came out before Patrick had a chance to think. Pete was _in the shower with him_. He was still trying to process this. 

"If you really didn't want to see it, you wouldn't have been in such a hurry to leave," Pete said. The statement only made as much sense as anything else that had happened that day, which was to say, not very much sense at all. Except-- it almost did. Patrick opened his mouth to retort, but Pete interrupted. "Do yourself a favor and don't say anything." 

Patrick didn't need to be told twice. He closed his mouth, and Pete leaned in closer, bracing his arm on the wall over Patrick's shoulder. He was in the same position Patrick had been in moments ago, only this time Patrick was pressed between him and the wall. They were almost cheek to cheek, when Pete pulled down his shorts and Patrick felt his dick on his stomach. Patrick's was similarly pressed between them, and the small hairs on Pete's stomach felt like spiders crawling up his shaft. It was at the same time the most horrifying and the most awesome thing he'd ever felt in his life. 

Then Pete's hand was between them, and he grabbed himself and began stroking, his knuckles brushing Patrick's stomach as he did so. Now they really were cheek to cheek, and Pete's breath was right in Patrick's ear. Patrick shifted his weight and suddenly his dick was right next to Pete's hand. He could feel the friction from Pete's movements and it was like a jolt straight to his groin. He was afraid of touching himself for fear that he'd come embarrassingly quickly, but in truth, he didn't have a choice in the matter. His body was on autopilot. 

Pete's breathing quickened, along with his pace, and Patrick felt like he was going to fall over any minute. He was trying very hard not to think about what was happening and just enjoy the experience, but it was very hard. What, exactly, was happening here? Was this something straight guys just did sometimes? Did it mean Pete was into him? Were they going to speak about this later? Just when he was in danger of losing momentum due to too much thinking, Pete pulled away. Patrick almost had time to say something, but Pete pressed his lips to Patrick's and he completely lost his train of thought. He _knew_ that straight guys didn't kiss each other (well, maybe they did, but usually it was in a joking context and not in the shower during mutual masturbation). But that was exactly what was happening. 

Pete was very serious about kissing, open-mouthed and endearingly earnest, the same way he did pretty much everything else in his life. He dove in with everything he had, and succeeded at seriously confusing Patrick and turning him on immensely at the same time. Pete pushed their hips together rhythmically, fucking the space between their bodies and panting against Patrick's lips. He let out a desperate moan and came against Patrick's stomach, and that little moan was just too much for Patrick to take. In it was everything about Pete that Patrick loved: his sense of urgency, his desperation, his passion for everything that happened to him. It was sex and it was very, very _Pete_ , and Patrick couldn't stop the orgasm that gripped him, curling his toes and clenching his stomach. 

They were still kissing as Patrick came down, breathing heavy with his heart beating in his throat. Pete didn't break the kiss until Patrick's breath was back to normal, and their bodies were both sagging against the shower wall. There was no noise except their breathing and the sound of the water pattering against the floor of the bathtub. Pete pulled away and looked at him with lazy eyes and a searching face, almost as though he was trying to gauge Patrick's reaction. Then he smiled. "So, _now_ we're even." 

Patrick wanted to say something. Anything. He wanted to say that they could never be even because there was no way-- no _way_ \-- that Pete could possibly have gotten the same feeling out of the experience that Patrick did. He wanted to ask if this was going to happen every time Pete walked in on him beating off. He wanted to know if they could do that again, if this meant anything was going to change, if he could only kiss Pete again. He wanted to tell Pete everything. 

But words were Pete's forte, not his. If asked how he felt right now, the only word he'd be able to say would have been Pete's name. And the funny thing was? Pete probably knew this. He probably knew everything Patrick wanted to say right now. That's why they were best friends. So all he said was, "Yeah. I guess we are."


End file.
